Question

I’m trying to write a small piece of code that passes a small formula to another program, however i’ve found that something strange happens when the formula starts with 11*(:

$ echo 11*15

Neatly prints ’11*15′

$ echo 21*(15)

Neatly prints ’21*(15)’, while

echo 11*(15)

Only gives ’11’. As far as I’ve found this only happens with ’11*(‘. I know that this can be solved by using proper quotation marks, but I’m still curious as to why this happens.

Does anyone know?

Answer 1

How is your program coded? If its coded to take in parameters, then pass your formula like

./myprogram "11*15"

or

echo '11*15' | myprogram

If you do echo just like that on the command line, you may inadvertently display files that has 11 in its file name